Post-Darwinist

This blog provides stories that Denyse O'Leary, a Toronto-based journalist, has found to be of interest, as she covers the growing intelligent design controversy. It supports her book By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg 2004). Does the universe - and do life forms - show evidence of intelligent design? If so, Carl Sagan was wrong and so is Richard Dawkins. Now what?

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Thursday, August 10, 2006

In an article in Skeptical Inquirer Paul Kurtz announced that religion and science are compatible:

... there is an appropriate domain for religion, and in this sense science and religion are not necessarily incompatible. That domain is evocative, expressive, emotive. Religion presents moral poetry, aesthetic inspiration, and dramatic expressions of existential hope and yearnings.

In other words, religion represents what yer know ain't so.

I don't imagine he'll sell too many of those to people who take their faith seriously.

More to the point, the relevant question is not whether "religion" and "science" are compatible. When categories are as broad as that, anything can be compatible with anything else, or not. The relevant question for Western culture is whether Judaeo-Christianity and Darwinism are compatible. The Pope, to give an example, seems to think not. Some intelligent and progressive Muslims are getting restless too. Stay tuned.

What about "Five-star religion-and-science bore banished to horrid 1960s rec room!"? Aw, that was just an example of my "dramatic expressions of existential hope and yearnings." I guess you guys all prefer facts. Yeah, I kind of thought so. You guys are a tough crowd.

Faith at Science: O'Leary's first book, offered at new low rate

My first book, Faith@Science, a collection of essays on a variety of topics at the intersection of Faith Avenue and Science Street, is currently offered at a new low price at Amazon, so if you would like it, this is your chance. You can read excerpts and such as well.

This just in from evolutionary psychology: Hardwired to believe in God - part zillion and three

According to the Dallas Morning News, a recent experiment in the British University of Newcastle psychology department tells us great stuff about how we come to believe in God.

"I had been looking after the coffee and tea in our department for ages," she said. A sign set the prices for tea, coffee and a bit of milk – 30, 50 and 10 pence.

In January, without telling anyone, Dr. Bateson and her colleagues added one feature to the payment sign: They put up a picture of eyes for five weeks, alternating with a picture of flowers for five weeks.

When the eyes were posted, payments averaged 2.76 times larger than the weeks with the flowers.

The experiment confirmed two earlier studies, including one run by Dr. Fessler and a colleague, that used eyes or faces on computer screens. In all three experiments, people faced by even a hint of a face tended to act nicer.

So, putting the links together:

Our ancestors were hard-wired to pay attention to faces and to change behaviors if they were being watched. They were also inclined to believe in supernatural beings.

And they seem to have been programmed to subconsciously respond to the concept of an immaterial supernatural observer as if it were another person – which is what the break room experiment demonstrated.

Note that marvelous expression, "putting the links together ... " Somewhat the way the consiprazoid puts the links together and discovers that no celebrity from Marilyn Monroe onward died of causes other than murder...

Having decided at the outset that belief in spiritual occurrences must be the result of a psychological disposition and not the result of experience, the evo psycho Melissa Bates goes on to build a whole theory out of, essentially thin air. In fact, even Jeffrey Weiss, who is in her camp, admits

A few last-minute caveats: Every link in this chain is controversial. Behaviorists, psychologists and biologists have alternate theories about why humans cooperate and practice religion. Even those who agree on the broad outlines disagree about important details.

I'll bet. As a matter of fact, the best explanation for the improved collection record has nothing to do with belief in the supernatural at all, but with the - well-justified - suspicion that the picture of the eyes meant that one's petty pilfering had come to the notice of the coffee convenor ...

It never seems to occur to evo psychos and similar folk that, given that they are most unlikely to have a genuine spiritual experience, they are actually in a much poorer position than most people are to understand or comment lucidly on such experiences. They stand in about the same relation to spiritual experiences as the blind do to art or the deaf to music. Thus they are suckers for any fool theory that comes along. And some journalists are no better.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

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